And so it continues. The Human, by contrast, is saying, ‘This is just a
speech,’ ‘I can deal with criticism,’ ‘I can only do my best,’ ‘Stop
overreacting and stop getting things out of perspective,’ and so on.
With these examples, we can begin to appreciate the struggle for
thinking between the Chimp and the Human.
Drives
Apart from instincts, the Chimp has strong drives. A drive is
something that compels us to get up and do something. If we didn’t
have drives we would just sit around and do nothing. Drives fulfil
needs that we have, both physical and emotional.
The Chimp has powerful drives such as sex, dominance, food,
security, parental, territorial and the search for a troop. The purpose
of these drives is to perpetuate the species. Like instincts, drives are
in-built, they are there from birth, but they don’t require a trigger or
stimulus. As drives are necessary for survival, their compelling
nature makes them difficult to resist. For example, the drive to eat is
extremely powerful and your Chimp will probably gorge itself if food
is available because there may be no guarantee when the next meal
will be. Again, the Human within you will be saying that one
doughnut is fine whereas the Chimp will crave as many as it can eat
before it feels full, leaving the Human to pick up the guilt!
Arguably, female chimpanzees are more prone to having stronger
feeding drives than males, possibly because they are normally
pregnant or nursing a youngster. They therefore need to eat heavily
in order to do this. A developing youngster within the womb can
drain the mother’s physical resources and she needs to replace
these quickly. In nature, the normal state for a female is to be
pregnant or to be nursing and therefore it would be no surprise if the
eating drive were to be powerful. The inner Chimp’s drive for food is
very healthy and normal. However, we are not in the jungle but in a
society and the strength of the eating drive becomes inappropriate. It
therefore needs to be contained and managed carefully. Many
people, men and women alike, suffer horrendously trying to manage
their Chimp’s eating habits and it can cause terrible distress with
weight control problems. If the Human understands the
consequences of overeating and being overweight but is happy with
